Hulk stuff is in the Hulk thread, but it's all rolling along pretty good. Do yourself a favor and pick up World War Hulk just for the stuff with Rick Jones.

Quasar #1: The first issues of the other two Annihilation minis have come out, and they're both winners. In the first issue of Quasar, she fights the Super Adaptoid, becomes temporarily possessed by the spirit of Annihilus, and discovers that the cordon around Kree space is cutting off her link the the quantum bands' power source, meaning that every time she uses them she risks running out of juice. Now that's the way to set up a mini series.

Starlord #2: Just having the first issues to go off of, this is my favorite of the minis. I think I even like it better than Nova. We finally, like four years later, find out what made Peter Quill give up being Starlord. Now, after having been attacked by the Phalanx, Quill has his implants removed and is put in charge of a squad of Kree prisoners. Their mission is to use a low-tech attack to destroy the Phalanx's base of operations for spreading their conquest. Most of this issue is the introduction of Quill's team: former Micronaut Bug, Shi'ar renegade Deathcry, former Avenger and current Celestial Madonna Mantis (possibly the best hand to hand fighter in the universe), the new Captain Universe, Rocket Racoon - a talking space racoon, and Groot, a giant talking tree.

Cable and Deadpool #43: Wade tries to break Weasel out of a Hydra base before Wolverine shows up and kills everyone. He doesn't quite make it. By the way, at this point there should be no question that Deadpool has, by far, the most powerful healing factor in the Marvel Universe.

X-Men #201: Wow, the Marauders just hand the X-Men their heads here - something which I don't believe they've ever been able to do before. Canonball and Iceman (two of my personal favorites) are the only ones able to escape. What makes no sense, though, is that after the Marauders beat the X-Men, instead of finishing them off they just leave them burried under rubble. These are stone killers, why would they take that chance? As for the Endangered Species back-up, first let me say something: I was going to go ahead and buy New X-Men to keep up with it, but they decided to start Endangered Species on part three of a four part arc in that book. What kind of retard asks you to jump into a book in the middle of the story? So I left that one on the shelf. Particularly because it's looking more and more like there's only one issue's worth of content in the Endangered Species story. Anywho, at the end of this chapter someone shows up who you absolutely should have been expecting.

Modok's 11 #1: Really excellent. Modok is apparently going a bit crazy, and recruits the Armadillo, the Puma, Rocket Racer, Deadly Nightshade, Living Laser, the Chameleon, the Spot, and Mentallo in order to pull some sort of super-heist. Of course, if you've been counting, that only makes 9 counting Modok. Mentallo, in particular, is great, and is also the only one who figures out that Modok is hiding something from the rest of the group.

Thunderbolts - Desperate Measures: This, however, was terrible. The writer and the artist are both trying to ape the regular team's style, and they fail misserably at it. Dumb plot and ugly art. Save your money.

Iron Fist #7: Stand alone story about the female Iron Fist that we've seen in some of the flashbacks. Good story, but too many different art teams makes it feel slapdash.

Hellboy Darkness Calls #4: People who help Hellboy have a life expectancy measured seconds, apparently. The new queen of the witches has been chosen and released from her prison, although we have yet to see her, and Hellboy squares off with Koshchei the Deathless.

Birds of Prey #108: Simone's last issue. I'll give the new guy a chance, but I don't know if I'm inclined to stick with the characters without Simone. I will probably pick up her Wonder Woman, though. At any rate, this issue basically just wraps up Simone's dangling plot threads, although it does have a nice spread of all the members that have been on the team.

The 99 Special: This was free with my purchase. Written by Naif al-Mutawa and Fabian Nicieza, it's a story about Middle Eastern superheroes. And it's actually pretty good. I don't really have the cash to add it to my pull list, but if you've been looking for positive representations of people from the Middle East, you could do a lot worse than this. A lot worse.